You’re standing in a gym with hundreds of screams coming from every direction, a microphone screeching with every word, and bumping shoulders with those beside you. Many students relate to this description of rallies, which leads to the question: Are rallies serving their purpose? Leadership states that rallies are held to strengthen our school’s community. Despite this, there is a growing number of students who are not attending; reasons include the overwhelming atmosphere and need to maximize homework time. To help address the gap in participation, leadership is brainstorming ideas to bring students together and create a more inclusive environment.
Based on a survey sent out during the Dec. 9th rally, held to de-stress for finals, 62% of people did not attend because of the overwhelming atmosphere. 25% said they’d rather use the time for homework. The remaining 13% said rallies simply weren’t their thing.
“I don’t attend rallies because I think they’re loud and too crowded. Also I can never find my friends,” sophomore Emma Kostick said.
Some students’ personalities don’t mix well with the rally environment. Art teacher, Jennifer Norman, who keeps her room open to students during rallies, acknowledges this.
“Imagine if you arrive here at 14 years old and sensitive, and there are a thousand people screaming, how are you going to feel?” Norman said.
Another frequent reason students choose to miss rallies is to use the time to work on school work.
“This is a great time to catch up on any missing work, plus some teachers help you out on the assignments,” sophomore Suryan Kumar said.
To address these issues, student and leadership faculty are considering new ideas to maintain school spirit.
“Leadership wants to incorporate more games that involve the entire grade instead of just a couple people,” senior rally leader Sadie Fonarev said.
One approach is to have separate events for each class to reduce the number of people and make the noise more tolerable.
“The class events sound more fun because I am personally only close with the people in my class,” junior Catherine Louie said.
Changing the nature of rallies will take time because it has been a tradition for many years; but Leadership believes it is worth the effort to optimize events that are inclusive.
“That’s what we are trying to do in the first place, to create a fun environment and competition for all students,” Fonarev said.
